


Bad Part of the Night

by Ivyzord



Category: Disco Elysium (Video Game)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Insomnia, M/M, Nightmares, Past Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Post-Canon, Pre-Canon, relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-19
Updated: 2020-05-19
Packaged: 2021-03-02 22:49:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,086
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24274603
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ivyzord/pseuds/Ivyzord
Summary: Harry deals with bad dreams. This in not an entirely new problem for him. They are overwhelming sometimes. It's good to have someone, who can help.Then and Now
Relationships: Harry Du Bois & Dora Inderlund, Harry Du Bois/Kim Kitsuragi
Comments: 12
Kudos: 40





	Bad Part of the Night

**Author's Note:**

> Prompted by my own sleeping problems. 
> 
> [Sisyphus - Calm It Down](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUFVY5tbn1A)
> 
> I'm on my own two feet  
> But I'm not standing upright  
> Mine is the pressure  
> Mine is the pain  
> Was it the drugs I take?  
> Was it ambitious outbreak?  
> Mine is the fury  
> Mine is the gain  
> Shall I account for peace?  
> Shall I resist it my way?  
> Minus the glory  
> Minus the praise  
> Now that I feel the shame  
> I've got every reason to persuade  
> Mine is the problem  
> Mine is the pain

As Harry abruptly wakes up, he’s still lost in an abstract impression of some crime scene or another, all of them haphazardly blurring together. He feels confused, his breath stutters violently, he’s covered in sweat, there's a painful pressure in his chest, No coherent thought controls his him when he shift in his bed, wishing for something to save him from sinking, a light to help him navigate the storm. He traces a familiar body outline next to him. It’s something comfortable and calming, so he grabs onto it too suddenly, most likely too harshly in a panic, a pathetic whine is his plea for help. The only one he can muster.

“What the hell, Harry? What do you want?” A voice that is usually sweet as pie tastes like it was laced with razors. Most people never get to hear it quite like this. This is something almost sacred, only for him, a warped sacrament. “I have to wake early tomorrow.” She shifts on the bed, further away from him. “Go back to sleep.”

“Dora...” He says with desperation, of a man on a verge of drowning, trying to hold onto a knife. “It’s too much, the dreams…” He breaths out, every word accented with pain. He grabs onto her arm, in an attempt to make her turn towards him.

“Let go of me.” She shakes his hand off, covers herself up. “Why are you so needy?”

Raw dark emotion builds helplessly inside Harry. It’s cold, relentless and growing in power every second, fighting back against his efforts to subdue it, until his vision is blurry with tears. “I just wanted some goddamn support” The choked anger comes out as an aggressive, accusatory whine “Why can’t you just, fucking, help me!?”

“Oh, here we go again.” She sits up on the bed sharply and light up a little nightstand and turns to him, her beautiful, face twists with disgust at the sight. “Again, with the guilt trips and the waterworks. Couldn’t it wait until morning? I have a very tough day ahead of me and you would know it if you stopped to listened, if you ever cared about anyone besides yourself.”

“That’s not true...” He says weakly, slowly sitting up, trying to keep his composure and to disregard the pain of holding back tears. “You know that...”

“Yeah, I know...” She relents with a resign voice “You care, about lots of things. Murder victims, lost children, battered spouses. You have the weight of the world on your shoulders, now.” She exhales sadly. “I simply can’t compete, with all the real problems out there, there’s no care left in you for me, or for the...” she looks down, hugs herself hand around her waist. “No, it doesn't matter anymore….”

“Dora, for fuck’s sake, you fucking know it’s not like that. We don’t have to do it again. We wouldn’t be arguing if you just fucking… you used to be more… I don’t know anymore”

Oh, that’s rich, I used to be different? I changed? I’m not the one who put my world upside down, with no regard for anyone in my life.” Dora reins back the anger, speaking calmer, buy traces of venom still detectable in her voice. “I was never ready for the changes you’ve brought to our life.” Her voice turns sad, cold and controlled. “I don’t know what you want from me anymore. I don’t know how to help you, Harry. I don’t think I’m selfish, I’m just... tired” She turns her back to him, sits at the edge of the bed. Her slender form backbit by the lamp. Her translucent sleeping gown makes her look like a displeased Icon on a stained glass. She looks around the room, her eyes stop at the window. “This is not what I wanted.” Her head slumps down dejectedly, bright hair sliding over the shapely shoulders. “You wanted this. The horrible, piss-poor paying job. This life. This miserable city. I just can’t be the one responsible for it, all the time. I can’t keep… managing you.”

Harry clenches his fists and eyes, trying contain the bail gathering in his throat, determined not to turn this into another shouting match. He might just win, he have always been louder, but she was more precise. But no matter who won, it always left him feeling like shit. Frail, tired and so fucking guilty. He let’s the unuttered yells tear him from the inside, instead. The held back tears start flowing freely as he opens his eyes. “Dora...” He rasps weakly, a voice somewhere on a border of desperate yearning and raw loathing.

“No, Harry, I don’t think I can stand it much longer. We can’t keep doing this. Whatever this is, you have to deal with it yourself, take the responsibility.” He touches her shoulder, she slowly leans away from it and no one says anything for the longest time. The heavy silence is broken with an even more weighty sigh. “I want to go back to sleep. You’re already souring me day.”

Harry backs away slowly, his moves unnatural, automatic, he steers the heavy unwieldy vessel of his body outside the bedroom and closes the door behind him. He stands there awkwardly in his underwear with his back to the door. Walls of his own house feel lonely and foreign. He notices, that he is, again, clenching his fists to the point his nails are digging into the flesh. Tears stopped falling replaced by a vast emptiness. He reminds himself to breath, but he remains there and weakly hopes for something. Maybe she’ll call out to him, say she’s sorry. The door might open any minute and she’ll hug him, talk to him softly, calm him down in a way only she can. Such scenes become more and more a thing of a past. Harry overdid it, he slowly wore her down.

Yet he still lingers, waits, listens, grows colder inside and out. When he finally hears something it’s a sigh, a click of the light and a moment of shifting in the bedsteads. He can easily picture her laying back down… then, there's only silence. The anger rises in him again. He feels cheated, that she can just go back to sleep, just like that, while this is eating at him. He won’t just calm down after what just happened. He must have finally destroyed her, filed her kindness with his outburst down to nothing. She has been desensitized to his overbearing emotions. As he is trying to cage them, they just become wilder, lashing out at him, feed by atrocities he witnessed as the RCM officer, by the nightmares. He is left to try to domesticate these feeling alone.

He barely makes the decision, as his feet carry him to the kitchen, a passenger in his own body. He grabs a mostly empty bottle of cheap whiskey and stops himself from chugging from it directly. He was suppose to cut down on this shit. He pours it into a glass, adds a few ice cubes. I makes it seem a little less urgent, less desperate. Maybe it’s to prolong the deed, to give himself a few more moment to change his mind? He end up standing in front of the kitchen counter, looking at the drink. Almost naked, hunched over and pathetic, he observes at the condensation gather on the outside of the glass, letting the water drip and stain the countertop.

his contemplative moment alone, in not enough, to calm him down. The thought of returning to the bedroom, where that woman sleeps makes him grab the glass. The fact that he’s afraid of further disturbing her makes him hold it tight. The self loathing for being this weak, for destroying everything, brings the liquid to his lips. As it hits his tongue it tastes like a cold, bitter relief.

* * *

This overwhelming scene was freshly recalled by Harry's memory. It played, triggered by a view of a dark ceiling, that entered his vision as his sleep was, again harshly halted by nightmare. He lays there, too afraid to move, to afraid to think, beads of sweat covering his forehead. He tries to quietly steady his breathing, tries not to shift too much, but when he turns to his side he spots a familiar silhouette next to him and he remembers where he is. His partner sleeps besides him, partially lit by some stubborn Jamrock streetlight.

He focuses on Kim. His hair are in disarray. He's in an oversized t-shirt. His face squished against a pillow, mouth slightly parted. He looks delightfully unprofessional. That does wonders for Harry's poor burning nerves. This should be enough.

He mindlessly lifts his hand, to reach for a loose strand of hair, then halts himself in panic, fingers hovering halfway toward Kim’s face. An alarm ring again in his head, the overwhelming need for comfort raises in him. He feels selfish, lost, useless, He’s gonna taint everything again, like the poison that he is. The more he fights it, the more he torments himself, the stronger the desperation. A freshly conjured image of the glass enters his mind, fed by the memory, courtesy of Harry’s treacherous brain. The taste so vivid it dances on his tongue.

He takes a deep breath and gently, shakily, reaches for Kim’s palm. Maybe this is the mistake, maybe it will end up in an argument. At leas he’ll help Kim to get rid off himself, show him, that he’s only trouble, a problem to monitor, and that way they’ll bot be free from this delusion… He grabs the hand.

Kim blinks a few times and opens his eyes narrowly. He looks somewhere in Harry’s direction, obviously not really seeing him… “Harry?” the only response in the tighter grip on his hand. “Harry, did something happened?” He sounds tired and groggy, but he return the gesture. He closes his eyes, giving up on finding anything in the dark, but he shifts closer. “What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know, it’s the dreams, the memories, it all got mixed up I’m sorry” He stifles a cry. “I just got lost in it all...”

Kim blindly feels around the pillow until he finds Harry’s face. He must have felt the wetness on his cheek, but he doesn't show it in anyway. He just rests the hand there, lightly smoothing the disheveled, damp facial hair. He furrows his brows, like he’s trying to focus, calculating what is the right thing to say next. “Do you want to talk about it?” He starts to lift himself from the bed.

“No!” Harry stops him. “No, not now, anyway. It’s fine. It will be, just… stay like that, with me for a moment... please.”

Kim just gives an affirmative hum in response, laying himself back down, moving yet closer to Harry, who curls helplessly into his chest.“Try to get some sleep. Knowing our luck we probably have to work soon.” He puts an arm around him and with his palm draws lazy, calming circles on Harry’s back.

“I’m sorry...”

“Hmm, It’s not like I’m used to getting a full night sleep, anyway. Now, rest.” Kim is halfway back asleep, when he lays a mindless kiss on Harry’s forehead.

Harry holds on to him, as he has to actively reminds himself, that He is not Her. _He is not Her._ Maybe Harry might start to believe that he is not the poison, maybe he just mixed with her, gave a bad reaction. Or maybe he just lost some of the potency, along his memory. Maybe Kim is just the right antidote. Whatever the case, there is a hope he won’t destroy this. He feels a little less sad, broken and toxic.

Being Held by Kim like that feels like floating gently above the surface of the treacherous depths of the past, the demons stirring somewhere underneath the surface. Yet, he has full trust he won’t fall in today. He’s safe for now and the waves are gently rocking him back to sleep.

Kim’s hand now rest limply on Harry’s side. He is now fast asleep. Both of them dog tired, after yet another hard day’s work. Harry takes a moment to look at him up close, and to give him his due reverence. “Thank you, Kim, for this... for everything. I hope you know...” He lowers his head down and closes his eyes, not daring to look at him, as if in prayer, he whispers. “You know I love you, right?”

**Author's Note:**

> [Sisyphus - Take Me](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrOH9zgEgu4)
> 
> And will you keep me safe from harm?  
> Will you hold me close in your arms?  
> I wanna be your friend
> 
> Love, take me to your room  
> I wanna be your friend
> 
> And I have no appetite  
> And I cannot sleep through the night  
> I wanna be your friend  
> I‘ve got pictures in my head  
> Only thought of you in my bed  
> I wanna be your friend  
> With the terror you may find  
> For I fear I’m losing my mind  
> I wanna be your friend
> 
> So I wasn't done with Disco Elysium after all. This one, sort of, came to me. Tried to work on other things. Nothing I do feels right lately. I hope this is somewhat right.


End file.
